From crossing to the shady side of the street when it’s not yet 9am, enviously eyeing up the tourists with their pastel parasols, to struggling to sleep at night even with an ice pack on their heads, Parisians are developing individual coping strategies amid a succession of near back-to-back heatwaves.

Paris’s zinc-clad rooftops and handsome Haussmannian cut stone buildings with their large, elegant windows – in short, everything that gives it its charm – start to feel decidedly less romantic as the thermometer creeps up to and beyond 40 degrees. After enduring record-breaking temperatures last month, France is currently in the grip of its third heatwave of the year.

The extreme heat is stifling and deadly. Provisional figures estimate more than 2,000 people died of heat-related causes at the end of June. French health authorities say that over the past decade, more than 14,000 deaths have been attributed to the population’s exposure to heat specifically during heatwaves, and nearly 40,000 over the entire monitoring period.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that dense urban centres such as Paris are beginning to lose some of their appeal for those seeking greener, cooler neighbourhoods to live in and raise their families. While it wouldn’t be true to say there’s been an exodus from the capital, researchers say a gradual rebalancing away from city centres appears to be under way, a trend accelerated by the Covid pandemic and its repeated gruelling lockdowns. Many urban planners in France believe climate change could reinforce that shift,........

© The Irish Times